


The Show Must Go On

by TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Canon-Typical Violence, Demon Hunters, Demons, Gen, Mild Language, Music, OT5, Rock Stars, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28101099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard
Summary: These guys really know how to bring down the house.
Kudos: 24





	The Show Must Go On

There was always a notoriously tough crowd at Seventh Sin. 

The dingy, humid venue on the outskirts of town had seen better days. Better years. With its heavily graffitied walls and a pierced and tatted-up crowd that was quite vocal in their negative reactions, a lot of local bands dared not take the stage. Horror stories of musicians, even out-of-towners, being booed off stage were dangerously common so it was shocking the place made enough business to stay open… but here they were anyway, tuning their guitars, rolling through sound check, Yeonjun’s “Check check check…” echoing over the sound system with screeching feedback cutting in and out.

On normal nights, the minutes before a show started was Taehyun’s favorite part of performing. But there was something about tonight that wasn’t sitting well with him. Something wasn’t going to go right. He could feel it in the air. This suspicion crawled over his skin and gave him goosebumps. Made him shiver.

“You sure about this spot?” Taehyun propped a booted foot up on one of Soobin’s bass drums and ran a hand through his angel-white hair. “There’s not really a lot of... space… for what we need to do.”

Soobin raised a pierced brow and deeply frowned. The drummer barely looked up from adjusting his floor tom when he answered, “Of course I’m fucking sure. This is the place. I can smell it.” He smashed his drumstick against the snare as if to punctuate his statement. 

Well, even if this wasn’t the place, they were already up here and, in all honesty, Taehyun was mainly talking just to make noise. Usually, before a show, he could burn away his nervous jitters by listening to the crowd, by vibing off their anticipatory energy, but beyond the glare of the house lights, it was hard to tell if a crowd was out there at all because of how quiet it was. Were they being so harshly judged already?

“If you’re that doubtful of my abilities,” Soobin said, raising a tattooed arm in a middle finger salute, “be my guest and try to find the gate yourself.”

“Okay, okay… I trust you,” Taehyun eventually mumbled, “but do you trust me?”

Soobin looked him dead in the eyes but didn’t answer him.

“Hell,” Taehyun huffed. “I guess I deserve that after what happened last time.” It would probably take Soobin another long week or two to forgive Taehyun for interrupting his hot make-out session with that foreign chick in the alley behind The Masquerade last month. But, in Taehyun’s defense, the girl was demon-possessed! Soobin had been mere seconds from literally having his soul sucked out of his body. An arrow through the breast was the fastest way to separate the demon from her human host (and it was a miracle that he’d made the shot without hitting the drummer.) Taehyun had saved Soobin’s life that night, but apparently that didn’t matter if it meant stopping a steamy encounter.

“Can I get my face back? Shit!” Soobin complained.

Taehyun groaned and lowered his gaze. He went back to tuning his guitar, plucking his way up the scales. Soobin was right about one thing, though. There was a good chance the gate would open directly inside this building. Just their luck. Taehyun couldn’t sniff out a gate if his life depended on it, though. Everyone else could. He didn’t know what the problem was. His nose just never picked up on that tell-tale brimstone stench when a demon gate was creaking open and letting all of the baddies loose. Well it  _ did  _ work... just minutes and minutes too late, and in a business like demon hunting, seconds meant everything. Deep in thought, the boy strummed a chord on his guitar and felt the stage beneath his feet vibrate with the amplified sound. 

As if in answer, Kai, the lead guitarist, tore into a short warm-up solo. 

_ Too much reverb _ , Taehyun thought. Kai probably thought the same thing and crossed the stage to fiddle with his amp, strumming every now and then to test the new settings. When he got it to how he wanted, he let loose a hell-raising, dissonant chord.

They were ready.

“Nervous?” Taehyun asked Soobin, still trying to shake away his own jitters.

The drummer rolled his eyes.

Beomgyu, far on the other side of the stage, strummed a low and solid bass line and Soobin followed it up with a wicked pounding of his double bass drums. Taehyun took that as a hint to remove his boot from where it was propped up on the drum and he stepped towards the front of the stage. 

There was the crowd... Two hundred and something people. Standing, staring, waiting. Taehyun joined the maddening noise of his bandmates with a chord of his own and it was like the sound made Yeonjun materialize from nothing out of the hazy darkness stage right. The vocalist stepped past Taehyun, putting a reassuring fist into the small of his back.  _ Break a leg _ .

“Seventh Sin, are we ready?” Yeonjun shouted into the mic. “Are we feeling it tonight?”

Not even a hint of a response from the mean-mugging crowd.

Taehyun couldn’t even blame them. The five of them didn’t look like much, seeming more like runway models than rock stars. Especially Yeonjun, with his skinny fucking legs and a speaking voice as soft as soap bubbles. He’d been told to go fuck himself with his Justin Bieber-looking ass countless times and that was supposedly by his  _ fans _ . The critics called him much worse. It didn’t help that, tonight, he was wearing a bright purple hoodie and equally neon high-top sneakers, sticking out like a sore thumb in comparison to everyone else’s all-black ensembles. Yeonjun propped his foot up on a speaker as the band behind him filled the venue with noise. “We’re The Dream Chapter!” Yeonjun didn’t seem bothered at all by the brick wall of an audience. “This song is called Firestarters so let’s get right the fuck into it.”

Silence. 

A nasty two-syllable slur was hurled at him from the front of the crowd but Beomgyu drowned out the seething echo of it with the opening riff to the song. The dissonant noises they were making previously melted into the hard-hitting intro of the song, Soobin’s double bass drums kicking like second and third heartbeats. 

Yeonjun inhaled. 

In the moment of held breath that followed, his onstage persona took over. A switch flipping him from day to night. Even Taehyun, who had been playing with the band for eleven weeks now, still got shook up by the voice Yeonjun could produce from the depths of his chest. Where did it come from in that tall, lanky body of his? It was like a demon had possessed his vocal chords. Yeonjun let loose a deep growl and ripped into the lyrics of the song:

_ There’s nothing you can do, there’s nowhere you can hide _

_ When the monsters come out to play, all that’s left for you is fire _

Taehyun forgot about the mocking crowd. His mind zeroed in on the song, fingers flying across the strings. The energy of the music seemed to surge into his limbs and he couldn’t help but headbang as the first verse slipped out beneath his hand.

The chorus came up. The chugging guitar riffs peeling away into an easy-to-digest chord progression. Effortlessly, Yeonjun switched from screaming to singing, the lyrics about apocalypse in complete contrast to his silky, high voice. The boy bounded from one end of the stage to the other, his whole body a whirlwind of movement, his hoodie turning strange colors beneath the stage’s flashing lights. Despite how much the band moved onstage, the crowd stayed still. Then the second verse came out swinging. Hard and heavy. Back to screaming. 

One brave soul in the crowd started to mosh, arms flailing, sweat flying. Taehyun allowed himself to smile, bobbing his head in time to Soobin’s high hat. The band crashed into the dramatic end of the song.

“Thank you,” Yeonjun called out over Taehyun’s last note, his voice soft again. “We’re happy to be here with you guys tonight.”

Almost without stopping, Soobin charged right into the next song and the rest of the band followed him into the first verse. Taehyun travelled to the center of the stage, pressing up against Yeonjun’s side as he strummed the first few chords. He tilted his head back towards Yeonjun’s ear. “You see that?”

There was a smudgy, oily shape slinking through the crowd. Low to the ground and tentacled like an octopus. From their spot on stage, the two of them watched as the thing dragged itself from one side of the venue to the other, leaving an inky trail behind it. 

A demon. Fresh and sticky.

That meant the gate was open enough for the things to start squeezing themselves out into the human world. The other demons would surely sniff out the exit from hell and they’d come running. Flying. Scraping. Keening.

Without missing a lyric of the song, Yeonjun once again put the fist of his free hand against Taehyun’s back.  _ Yeah, I see it.  _ His voice echoed into Taehyun’s head even over the thunder of their music. Then Yeonjun was off to the left of the stage to headbang in time with Beomgyu.

Taehyun jumped into the air towards the right side of the stage, slinging his guitar around his body, the straps clinging tight. For a moment, he felt weightless, suspended in the air. Supported by nothing. Held down by nothing. He felt like he’d escaped gravity altogether and was about to go floating towards the house lights, but then he landed on the stage, caught his guitar with both hands and was right on beat with the next note.

This song was faster, snappier, and Beomgyu’s tricky bassline punched through the speakers in the moments between Soobin’s kicks.

_ These long, heavy chains won’t do you any good _

_ You can’t control me, there’s no way you could _

A second dark shape was creeping through the crowd. This one on all fours and as big around as a black bear. It pushed its way through the crowd, but as the venue slowly came alive with movement, not too many people seemed to notice its shape. The bear’s white-hot eyes burned into Taehyun’s vision so that he saw them even when he squeezed his eyes shut. Demons were almost entirely invisible to most humans, but if enough of them gathered in one place, that fact wouldn’t matter.

Taehyun slid up to the edge of the stage, peering out over the tops of the heads of the crowd. Those demons were already looking for people to possess, even as more and more humans added their swinging fists to the mosh pit. More than anything, Taehyun wanted to leap off stage and cut them down but the world couldn’t know about them. About the demons or the real purpose of the band. He had to sit tight until the gate opened and time stopped.

“Soon,” Soobin shouted in a heart wrenching half-beat of silence, but even then it was hard to hear him from the back of the stage. “Soon.”  _ The gate is opening soon. _ They had mere minutes--seconds!--before the fight.

By the time the band chewed through the third song on the setlist, the crowd had warmed up to them. Was it their fast-paced songs? Was it Yeonjun’s surprisingly powerful low tones? His deep and gritty pig squeals? Or was Seventh Sin not as tough as the rumors? Taehyun hadn’t been paying enough attention to notice exactly when they’d earned the venue’s approval but the place was slowly getting feverishly hot. Taehyun knew it wasn’t just the pumped-up crowd raising the temperature. By now, the choking stench of sulfur was sweeping over him. Even he could smell it at this point. The demon gate was opening, being shoved by the greedy force of dozens of demons. It was a freaky feeling. Like walking through a spiderweb. He glanced up and met Kai’s gaze across the stage. He’d felt it, too, and he wore an excited grin on his face to prove it. Beomgyu, at least, had the sense to look uncomfortable. 

_ Boom! _

It happened quickly. Between blinks. 

One second, all was well; the next, the demon gate flew open and the interior of Seventh Sin turned scarlet. 

The movement of the crowd stopped instantly, the pedestrians trapped in a pocket of time. 

Now the demons were here. Dozens of them. Dark and shadowy, so dark that they seemed to absorb light. They snarled and snapped at the air and leaped over the statue-still crowd towards the stage. Angry. Snarling. Needy for bodies to possess and consume.

Despite the charging horde, Taehyun felt a little bit of relief. At least now something could actually be done about the demons other than just watching them helplessly. “Finally,” he sighed.

Kai screamed in glee, even as the rest of the band continued to play. He hoisted his guitar up over his head, the stray chord turning sour and noisy as it bulldozed its way into the song. The guitar’s metallic paint job brightened with inner light before the whole thing blazed up in white, holy fire. It became malleable in his hands like wet clay. He pulled on it, stretching it once, twice, and then swung it hard towards the floor like he was shaking it loose. In a streak of color, the fire burned out, leaving behind a gleaming katana. “Hell Fucking Yeah!” 

“You should really consider naming your sword something else,” Beomgyu called out.

“No time for words!” Kai dismissed him. In less than a breath, he leaped off the stage and set to work carving his blade into the side of a horse-like demon. It was a shallow and amateur cut, peeling back only a thin stripe of the demon’s black hide, inky smoke escaping the wound. The horse whinnied and circled away from him, bucking back and kicking at him with its hind legs.

The first kick missed. The second kick came faster than Kai anticipated and nearly caught him square in the chest. If he’d been any slower, his ribs would have been crushed. 

Kai retaliated with another swing at the horse’s side. This time, the blade cut a long, blazing line of fire across the horse’s flank. It bolted away, its heavy steps audible even over Soobin’s thrashing drums.

Taehyun shook his head and focused on the song. He’d been dragging behind a little, distracted by the action in front of him, and as a result, he could feel the tense strain in the air and in his bones as time struggled to push itself forward again. They had to keep playing the song or all of these people would wind up no better than food in a Sunday afternoon buffet. He found his groove again and kept the low, choppy guitar riff in motion as the fight raged on. Time was locked out once again, trapped behind the blood red atmosphere that clung to every surface.

Back out in the pit, Kai ducked low to avoid the whip-like tail of a cat. A downward chop of his blade completely decapitated the rabbit demon bounding up on his right. The holy fire consumed the rabbit and its black fur sparked up and burned out in a burst of light. Dead in seconds. “That’s what I’m talking about,” they heard him shout.

“To your left,” Yeonjun shouted into the mic. “Block high!”

Kai turned and barely lifted his sword in a defensive stance before the octopus-shaped demon lashed out at him with a tentacle. There was a blinding spark as the powers of heaven and hell collided, then the octopus reeled back, smoking and bubbling, letting out some gurgling, guttural noise.

He was getting pinned in, Taehyun noticed. The octopus, horse and cat were going to have him with his back against the wall in seconds. Kai realized this as well and, rather recklessly, charged forward with a shout. He jumped into the air, matching the offensive movement of the cat. They met in mid-air, but Kai’s sword was faster than the cat’s sharp claws and the demon was split in two from end to end. The oily, smoking pieces of its body thunked against the floor before melting away, the fire dying and leaving only the faintest piles of embers.

“Behind you!” Yeonjun warned.

The swordsman spun around, but not in time. The injured horse-like demon headbutted him and he tumbled to the floor with a choking gasp.

“He can’t take them all on alone. He needs help,” Yeonjun said, and when Taehyun looked up from his guitar riff, he realized that Yeonjun was aiming this instruction at  _ him _ .

“Me?” He was shocked. Beomgyu and Soobin had been fighting demons months longer than he had. On top of that, wouldn’t Soobin’s hammer or Beomgyu’s iron claws be more handy in a close-quarters fight like this?

“You have to cover him,” Yeonjun explained. “Only you can keep them off his back with all of these people around.”

Taehyun had said it himself. There wasn’t a lot of space. Especially not for something as massive as a hammer, now that he reconsidered. “Okay,” he agreed, although he hesitated. 

“Hurry. They are going to pincer him.”

The desperate urging didn’t help matters, but Taehyun knew what he had to do. He tried to focus. Meditate. Pray. Whatever it was that Beomgyu had taught him. Ease the spirit. Transfer the energy. Whatever it was called! Several long seconds passed before his guitar stopped producing sound and began to fiercely glow. It warmed against his body, almost uncomfortably so, and he lifted it over his head so he could better shape it with his hands. A curve here, a curve there. Leave a little bit of mass in the middle. He hooked his fingers into the tiniest of grooves near the middle and pulled until the fire subsided and a bow remained in his hands. Crystal white and nearly as tall as he was. He pulled the drawstring farther back and a glowing arrow appeared, notching in place against the string.

Deep breath in. Slow breath out.

Ready. Aim. Fire.

The horse standing over Kai was pierced through the head and was exorcised by the cleansing flames.

“Good shot,” Yeonjun congratulated him.

Taehyun didn’t have time to enjoy the rare praise. He was already aiming another shot at a horrific scorpion crawling between the legs of the petrified crowd. Kai saw it as well and leaped to his feet, katana held at the ready.

Meanwhile, Beomgyu and Soobin continued to play. Bass and drums. At least one member of the band had to keep playing or time would slip forward again and all of these innocent lives would be in danger.

Taehyun loosed another arrow, but it bounced harmlessly off the scorpion’s thick carapace. “Kai,” he shouted over the music.

“I know,” came the reply. The guy would have to handle that one himself.

“To the right!” Yeonjun’s shrill voice made Taehyun jump. He’d nearly forgotten about the octopus. Sometimes he hated how slow and cumbersome the bow was, how difficult it could be to aim. He prepared a new arrow and fired. It missed by a mile, not even grazing the octopus’s form. It took several painfully frantic seconds to draw the string back and aim a new shot. He fired. The arrow caught the octopus in one of its tentacles, pinning it to the floor before it could escape between the legs of the crowd. Taehyun aimed again and the octopus burst into white flames, destroyed.

“Watch your head.” Yeonjun pointed. Taehyun trusted him enough to aim his weapon in the indicated direction without looking.

The bird swooping down towards the stage didn’t stand a chance. The arrow struck it so heavily that the demon was flung backward, pinned to the venue’s brick wall where it screeched in complete agony before finally dissolving away.

“I love this shit!” Was Kai’s battle cry, katana speared through the scorpion’s writhing form. Apparently, his end of the fight had also been going smoothly.

“Ahead of you,” Yeonjun said. If Taehyun remembered the explanation Soobin had given him correctly, Yeonjun was able to channel a small amount of holy power into his voice and with the sound amplified through the speakers and bouncing off of the walls, it was pretty much a demon-hunting radar. Of course, he had a proper weapon as well, but it was so dangerous and unwieldy that even battle-hungry Soobin didn’t like it when he used it. “Kai, right in  _ front of you _ . Big trouble.”

Kai’s laughter petered out as he caught sight of what was coming towards him. He put his foot on the scorpion’s head for leverage and pried his sword free, the demon burning away to nothingness beneath his boot. He charged between the statue-like bodies of the crowd and made to swing at the charging bear, only to get knocked aside as if he weighed nothing.

“I can’t get a clear shot,” Taehyun announced. He couldn’t aim with the crowd in the way, even from his new position on top of one of the speakers. “Draw it out of the mosh pit.” 

“Easier said than done, asshole!” Kai called back. He tried another reckless head-on approach with the bear, but the angle of his swing was too shallow and the katana bounced harmlessly off of the beast’s thick hide. He had no other choice but to throw himself to the ground to avoid the bear’s sweeping claw. Realizing that he would need help with this one, he crawled backwards, putting some space between himself and the demon. The bear was faster than him and brought one of its massive paws down towards him. Kai rolled out of harm’s way by a hair’s width and swung his sword upward, catching the bear in the side. He had finally managed to cut it and a tiny spark of promising fire seemed to catch in the beast’s black fur. The thing let loose a ground-shaking roar of frustration, but the attack bought Kai enough time to get to his feet and squeeze between the shoulders of two big guys in the crowd.

The bear found an alternative path through the cluster of human limbs and resumed its charge at Kai.

As soon as he had a clear shot, Taehyun fired. The arrow connected, but it didn’t seem to slow the demon at all. “Shit!”

Kai had to throw himself to the floor yet again to avoid getting mauled. He may have been fighting demons for months but it wasn’t like any of them were professionally trained for this. Kai was no athlete and it would only be a matter of minutes before he wore himself out with his unorthodox fighting style.

The bear turned around, ready to claw at Kai’s vulnerable back, but Taehyun fired an arrow that clipped it in the air, right through its paw, disorienting it enough for the swordsman to clamber to his feet and dash out of range.

“You can do it, guys,” Yeonjun cheered. “Keep your distance. Wear it out.”

“But what about all of the goddamn other ones?” Kai waved his katana in the general direction of the next wave of demons charging out of the hell gate. 

“I’ll handle it,” Yeonjun reassured him.

“No. We can’t risk it.” This was Beomgyu, leaning over Yeonjun’s shoulder to shout into the mic to be heard over the music and the noise of the demons. “I’ll go.”

“Soobin can’t do this by himself,” Yeonjun countered. “One slip-up in the tempo and it’s all over.” 

Raising his voice, Beomgyu said, “Taehyun’s arrows aren’t stopping that thing at all.”

“But we need you up here.”

Beomgyu and Yeonjun stared each other down, neither one willing to concede.

Frustrated, Taehyun loosed another arrow. It hit the bear in the side, which did nothing but anger it further. He really was trying his best here, but even if all he could do was annoy and distract the bear, that could possibly be enough. “I’ll slow it down! Kai, get past it and take out the rest.”

The swordsman took another risky swing at the bear, managing to cut it on its hind leg. White fire leaped from the wide wound. Before sticking around to see how effective (or ineffective) the attack would be, he took off running only to come face to face with a stag. One overhead swing and the stag’s left antler fell completely off of its head, white fire spurting from the demon’s head like blood.

Kai leaped on top of the shoulders of a frozen-in-time mosher and then jumped to someone else like a very ungraceful crowd surf attempt. 

An owl-shaped demon swooped down over his head, its massive white eyes haunting and empty. Kai swung at it, put a shallow cut across its back and then leaped to another set of shoulders. He held his arms out for balance until he could steady himself, one of his boots nestled right on the crown of the poor human’s head.

“Don’t do that. That’s so creepy,” Yeonjun admonished him from the stage.

“What else do you want me to do?” Kai shouted back, hardly audible in the noisy venue. “Besides, it’s not like they can feel it!”

Meanwhile, Taehyun was still trying to do battle with the bear. Every time he shot an arrow and watched it sing into the bear’s hide, he hoped that his attacks were doing some kind of good. Unfortunately, the bear was finding its way through the maze of legs and elbows, so it wouldn’t be long before it had an open path towards the stage and his bow definitely wouldn’t do him much good close up. Taehyun aimed for the bear’s neck and the arrow caught it beneath the jaw as it roared again. The bear attempted to barrel through the crowd to get at Kai’s ankles but its attack path was blocked by the bodies. Kai spotted an opening, made a risky leap and then slashed at the bear’s flank before jumping out of its range again. The bear was finally slowing down, more and more of its body becoming cleansed by fire.

All the while, Soobin and Beomgyu kept up their song, Soobin’s thunderous beat mixing with the sick depth of Beomgyu’s bass guitar. The result was a constant rhythmic pounding like rain and it felt to the others as if they were fighting underwater, their hearing impaired. 

“We’re slowing it down,” Taehyun called out. “Just a little bit more.”

“Kai,” Yeonjun shouted. “Behind you. Block low.”

The owl demon had circled back around and swooped down on him again, but Kai couldn’t move as fast perched on a time-frozen human’s shoulders. Both he and the bird fell out of sight behind the crowd.

“Kai!” Taehyun screamed, shifting his bow away from the bear.

“No, he’s got it,” Yeonjun told him. “Keep the bear in your sights.”

Feeling a little frazzled, Taehyun shot at the bear again. Missed. Cursed. The thing roared angrily and seemed to stare straight into his soul now that it had found a way around the bodies. Taehyun knew he’d put the others at risk if he remained on stage where they could be attacked, so he sprung into the air towards the crowd, landing on the large, square back of a heavily-tattooed man. He didn’t have time to feel bad about throwing his weight upon the helpless man because he needed to take aim.

“One more shot,” Taehyun wished. “Please, just one more shot.” The bear opened its maw to roar again as it charged and Taehyun shot an arrow straight down its throat. 

The demon let out a wild, choking noise before collapsing onto the floor. Its weight was so great that it slid forward quite some distance with the momentum of its charge. For a moment, it laid still only to get back up, standing to its intimidating, towering height on its hind legs. Fire burst from inside of it and its black fur was ablaze in a mere second but it still didn’t seem to give up, lumbering towards Taehyun with shocking speed.

“Just stay down. Fuck!” The archer jumped farther into the crowd, but he wasn’t as good at it as Kai. He misjudged the distance. His foot found only empty air and he toppled to the ground on his back, limbs sprawled. The gleaming bow went skittering across the hardwood floor, bouncing off shoes before halting out of his reach. Gasping, Taehyun pushed himself up onto his side, but the bear was right behind him. It swiped at him and he felt its claws rake across his back. Thank goodness for his leather jacket! He heard it rip like paper under the force of the attack, but better something cheap than his own skin.

“Kai?” He called out, crawling across the floor. His bow was too far away. He wouldn’t reach it.  _ Couldn’t _ reach it. A pained roar from right behind him, so close that his whole world shook with the vibration of it. Damn, the thing was fast! Taehyun turned back to the bear and clenched his fist around empty air. An arrow manifested in his grip and, with the newly acquired weapon, he sprang into the air. He put all of his weight into the downward swing and he felt the tremor throughout his entire body when the arrow plunged into the bear’s skull. The demon roared in pain, spit and smoky tar coating Taehyun’s face.

Then it vanished in a  _ whoosh _ of fire, leaving the boy to fall through the air where something solid had been only a moment before.

Taehyun collapsed onto his back, hurt and exhausted, but the fight wasn’t over yet. 

Kai was still out there. 

The hell gate was still open. 

He could barely make out Yeonjun’s shouted commands through the speakers as his ears continued to ring with the echoes of the bear’s roar.

He had to get up.

He had to keep fighting. 

As he pushed himself to his feet, he realized that his jacket hadn’t protected him from the bear’s claws half as much as he thought. He’d been scratched. Deep. From shoulder blade to hip. Every time he moved, his shirt would drag across the wounds and send a brand new wave of pain up his spine.

This was nothing, he reminded himself. This was nothing compared to a building full of demon-possessed shells. He had to do his job and save mankind. Taehyun squeezed between figures in the crowd and nearly fell over from dizziness before finally getting back to his bow. It was heavier than he remembered and lifting it in his hands made his entire body ache.

No, he could not give up.

There was still more to do. 

“What are you doing, Taehyun?” Kai screamed at him from a short distance away. “Help me with this damned gate!” 

Taehyun drew the string of his bow back and an arrow materialized. He breathed in, held it, aimed down the arrow and took the shot. The arrow lodged itself in the fin of an angelfish demon and the demon tumbled out of the air and hit the floor, flopping with a wet-sounding noise. Taehyun had to climb onto the shoulders of a girl in the crowd so that he could get a high enough angle to aim again and kill the fish with a second arrow to the gills. 

There were still more demons, but if they closed the gate, the monsters would scatter and retreat. Homeless.

He jumped down from the girl’s shoulders and pushed his way to the back of the venue. The black iron gate was nearly tall enough to scrape against the ceiling and beyond its vertical bars was a swirling vortex of fire and an army of dark shapes much like the ones they’d just fought off. Any second now, another demon would push through from that world to this one and Taehyun knew he couldn’t fight another wave. Kai was already pushing closed one of the iron gates. At least he still seemed in good spirits and laughed wildly as a demon’s paw bashed against the gate from the other side. Taehyun draped the bow over his shoulders and set to work pushing the remaining iron gate into place. It squealed on old hinges before slamming shut. “Seal it,” he called out as another demon collided with the gate from the inside, nearly throwing them both off of it and onto the floor. 

Kai regained his balance. “Hold it closed for me.”

A massive ape-like demon slammed its fists against the cage, rattling Taehyun so hard that he saw stars but he still moved to the middle of the gate and pressed his shoulder against the place where the gates met. The holy bow held just enough angelic force to make the ape flinch and step backwards.

“Hell Fucking Yeah,” Kai called out to his sword. It glowed white-hot in response to its ridiculous name. “Guide me as I follow the lonely path of the righteous. Guard me as I-”

“Just shut up and do it, dumbass,” Taehyun cut him off.

Kai groaned. “Let me have my moment!” The glow of his sword seeped into the skin of his palms and he began tracing a looping pattern along the gate’s iron bars. Wherever his fingers touched, a blinding white chain materialized and he wove it in and around the bars until the gate was tightly bound with a decent-sized padlock. Holy fire flared up, snapping and crackling, and the demons on the other side retreated in fear. 

A growl behind Taehyun made him release the gate and spin around, drawing his bow and readying an arrow. A handful of demons were choosing to fight instead of flee to the outside world to feast as they pleased. “We’ve got company.”

“Well, I can’t help you at the moment,” Kai snappily replied.

Taehyun shot blindly, not taking the proper amount of time to aim. The arrows flew in every direction, missing wide, but the threat of eternal banishment was enough to keep the demons from closing in. 

“Buy me thirty more seconds,” Kai commanded.

“I’ll try.”

Kai sheathed his katana and then breathed in and out, calming himself despite the red-tinted chaos behind him. He closed his eyes and tried to push the outside world away. Only his body existed and the heavenly energy that pulsed through his organs: his heart and his lungs and his kidneys. “Focus,” he mumbled to himself. “Focus.” When he’d pacified his spirit, he grabbed two of the gate’s iron bars and pushed and pushed and  _ pushed _ until the gate released its hold on the human world and went sliding back down to hell in a spiral of crimson fire and black smoke. Exhausted by the effort, he collapsed to his knees, but it was the worst possible time for it because the demons left behind hadn’t turned tail yet. 

“You got your thirty seconds,” Taehyun complained. One of his frantically-shot arrows hit their mark and the owl caught fire and disintegrated.

“Get me thirty fucking more,” Kai wheezed.

Taehyun grit his teeth and fired another arrow. It missed, but the demon was startled enough by the heavenly light that it took off, escaping into the night air outside of the venue.

By then, Kai had caught his breath and he unsheathed Hell Fucking Yeah and charged forward with an excited holler. An expert thrust and the stag-shaped demon went down as easily as if it were paper. A leaping downward slash and he chopped the head of a bull clean off. Taehyun took the time to properly aim, properly breathe, and when he released the arrow, it flew true and pierced the wolf demon right between its white eyes. The shadowy shape of the demon shimmered before crumbling to ash as the fire took over.

At least three other of the things chose to live another day and tore out of the building with impish, animalistic laughs.

“That’s all of them,” Yeonjun announced.

Soobin and Beomgyu were still playing, their song the only thing keeping nearly three hundred people safe in a tiny pocket of unmoving time. “Taehyun’s hurt,” Kai shouted back. His sword glowed brightly and he pulled and flattened the shape of it until it was his guitar once more.

“I’m fine,” Taehyun said, but it was an obvious lie. Blood had soaked the entire back of his shirt. Even Yeonjun would have trouble fixing the damage.

“Hurry,” Yeonjun said. “The show must go on.” 

The two fighters made their way back towards the stage, limping and stumbling. They hoisted themselves back onto the platform with sore arms and bruised legs and burning lungs.

When Kai took his place stage left, he joined Beomgyu and Soobin in the song, easing them through the chords of the chorus they’d been playing when the gate opened.

Yeonjun tsked in disapproval when he saw the gaping wounds on Taehyun’s back, but he went to work massaging gentle white flames into Taehyun’s flesh, cleansing him of the demonic touch. It took nearly five minutes but Taehyun didn’t complain or whimper once, even as the fire threatened to overwhelm him like he was a demon himself. When Yeonjun’s work was through, he put his fist to Taehyun’s lower back.  _ Feel any better? _

“Yeah, I do,” Taehyun said aloud.

Taehyun molded and shaped his bow back into the form of his guitar and he joined in with his bandmates. They were in the second chorus, right? Measures before the breakdown, if he remembered correctly.

Yeonjun moved towards the center of the stage, that other braver and bolder persona taking over, the one that could face a crowd of haters and still wholeheartedly thank them. He inhaled, held it for a second, and then screamed out the lyrics to the song:

_ Hands tied, eyes to the sky _

_ There’s only silence left on the other side _

As soon as the last syllable escaped his mouth, the scarlet wash over the world fell away. Color returned. Time resumed. The crowd went into a frenzy as The Dream Chapter tore into the song’s infectious breakdown. Grungy and loud and terrific. The boys headbanged in time to the beat, completely in sync. Excited shouts flooded the air and the whole room seemed to move as one.

Was Taehyun’s favorite moment of performing  _ before _ the show? He took that back. It was moments like this where an entire group of people seemed to live on a single heartbeat. He closed his eyes, tilted his head back and smiled. The energy in the room so palpable that it seemed to grab hold of him.

The song ended in a wild flourish and Kai held the last note for several seconds before stopping abruptly. 

“Thank you,” Yeonjun’s voice seemed tiny in the deafening silence, in the broken absence of music.

The crowd went wild with whoops and hollers.

Taehyun glanced around at his bandmates, at his friends. Soobin looked exhausted, the palms of his hands red and raw and blistered. Beomgyu looked tired but pleased. Kai seemed entirely spent, so soaked with sweat that even his famously curly hair had straightened under the dampness. Yeonjun, on the other hand, still appeared entirely put together, so calm and at peace despite their crazy set that Taehyun wondered if he was an actual, living, breathing angel. Yeonjun must have felt Taehyun’s eyes on him because he looked at the guitarist, his lips curling up in a knowing smile.

Had Yeonjun heard his thoughts somehow? Was the vocalist really an angel? 

Did it matter? They still had two songs to play.

“Alright, this next one is called And The Dead Come Alive,” Yeonjun said, smiling tirelessly at the energized crowd. “And in case you forgot, we’re The Dream Chapter and we’re so glad to be here with you tonight. We are all connected and I hope every single one of you know that.”

Soobin counted off the beat on his drumsticks and they moved right into the next song.


End file.
